Tag Archives: Scottish Nationalism

Spain isn’t greatly liked in Britain. This has been particularly noticeable in the past few weeks as the crisis in Catalonia has developed. Quite a few writers have indulged in the pleasures of Spain bashing and for a variety of reasons. Some Eurosceptic Brexiteers have sympathised with the Catalans and …

Until recently I thought that the Right had won the economic battle decisively, but were gradually losing the cultural war. Now I am not so optimistic. Conservative economics suffered a set-back at the last election and now Conservatives are actually helping the Left to still more decisively destroy Conservative values. …

One of the main benefits of travel and meeting people from different places is to discover that ideas that are almost universally shared in one place are unknown in another. There is a tendency in the West to suppose that what we think everyone thinks. Left/Liberal values are held to …

The SNP’s remarkable electoral ascent over the past decade has been driven by an ever increasing sense of political momentum. Far from diminishing after the 2014 independence referendum, the SNP’s momentum only gained in strength, and the 2015 election result that returned 56 nationalist MPs, wiping out Scottish Labour and …

I’m a Conservative, but above all else I’m a Unionist. Party politics is a matter of ups and downs. Our country is a different matter. I would gladly accept any defeat for the Conservatives if it made our country safer. It looks as if the Conservatives are going to lose …

Alex Salmond wishes to inform us that “the days of the British Empire are over, and the days of British prime ministers denying self-determination to the Scottish people are over as well.” There are all sorts of odd things about this sort of statement. Most of us who have any …

Sometime in prehistory a group of people arrived on our island from Europe. They were Celts. We know next to nothing about them or the people who lived here before they arrived. All that is left of them are the monuments they left behind, places like Stonehenge and Scara Brae. …

There is a stuffy consensus in Scotland. There always has been. Perhaps it has to do with the Presbyterian idea of the elect. We are exceptional. We are different. Wha’s like us. It makes our newspapers exceptionally dull, because almost no-one questions the assumptions which are shared even by political …

Many Scottish nationalists are impatient and permanently angry. The hundreds of thousands who joined the SNP after losing the referendum in 2014 are both a blessing and a curse. Of course, they are better than the alternative. Remember when there was the idea that the SNP would somehow fade away …

There is a reason I’ve been writing so much since the EU referendum and with perhaps a higher intensity than before. I returned from holiday in early July only to find one of my friends and colleagues in absolute bits. I remember that whole period of uncertainty leading up to …

When I stand at my bus stop waiting to go home I watch the lorries pass by. Nearly every single one has a combination of Scottish flags somewhere in the cab. There is usually a phrase about Scotland being bonnie or being forever. Sometimes there are bits of tartanry dotted …

There are an awful lot of British citizens at the moment who are at best indifferent to the fate of our country or at worst hostile. The most vocal of these are Scottish nationalists, but they are not alone. There are Welsh nationalists too who somehow think that Welsh independence …

There is a pattern to conversations with Scottish nationalists online. At some point the same old arguments are repeated. It is these arguments above all that mean that there is very little common ground between Pro UK people in Scotland and those who would prefer that Scotland became a sovereign …

The SNP are planning another so called “National Conversation” on whether Scotland should leave the UK. It was supposed to happen this summer, but has been put off for a while because of the UK’s decision to leave the EU. It’s crucial therefore to realise that even if the UK …

The choice of the UK electorate to choose to leave the EU has come as a shock, not only to those who voted to remain, but also to those who voted to leave. I think perhaps it is for this reason that a large number of Remain supporters have been …

There is a very respectable argument for Scottish independence that surprisingly is rarely made by supporters. It goes something like this. We want Scotland to be independent because we want Scotland to be a sovereign independent nation state just like all the others in the world and we don’t care …

The EU referendum is about remaining or staying in a union. For those of us who live in Scotland there are obvious comparisons with the Scottish independence referendum. But there are differences too. Leaving the EU is not about creating an independent, sovereign nation state called the UK. We are …

There are a number of central claims to the Remain campaign. They are easily dismantled with the right analysis and the proper arguments. “3.5 million British jobs are directly linked to British membership of the European Union– 1 in 10 British jobs.” It is dishonest to say jobs depend on …

It’s odd to think that in a little more than three months we might have been arriving at Scottish Independence Day. It doesn’t seem that long ago since September 18th 2014. I wonder if we would have been ready. Of course, countries can become independent more or less instantly. Look …